Day 62 - St. Charles and St. Louis, MO

The day started hot and clear. We ran along the KATY Trail (Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railroad - The MKT - which became KATY when the rail line was converted to a trail). This trail runs across much of Missouri. The portion we ran goes through old town St. Charles, just west of St. Louis.

We then toured the beautiful, heavily "treed" campus of Lindenwood University (pictured here), the alma mater of Marcia Giske. It is a lovely campus which is growing aggressively in number of students and curriculum.

We walked around the old town of St. Charles which was settled by the French around 1800. Many of the beautiful old buildings, like those pictured here, have been restored and converted to trendy shops and restaurants. St. Charles was the start and finish point for the Lewis and Clark expedition (1804-1806). They returned from their two years out in September of 1806, so the past two years have been and still are busy ones for this small city, with many celebrations and commemorative work done in the parks. We saw many of the exhibits both in St. Charles and in St. Louis in 2004 on a previous visit. We think it is well worth seeing to appreciate the astonishing accomplishments of these two men and their team.

A pleasant but hot afternoon was spent in the Washington University area of St. Louis and then we drove in to St. Louis to the new Busch Stadium for the baseball game. It is a wonderful stadium which just opened this year. The first photo here was taken about 6:15 p.m. We had hot dogs for dinner and were seated in our left outfield seats (good seats in spite of what it sounds like), waiting for the game to begin, when all hell broke loose. Suddenly at our back a tremendous dust cloud swept over the stadium, sending debris flying. Most of the dust and debris was from the adjacent demolition of the old stadium. We were protected from most of it. The ground crew rushed to get the Mylar tarp on the field, and they finally got it down in spite of its billowing in the wind uncontrolled for a few minutes. The Mylar tarp photo was taken at about 7:08 p.m. (I couldn't get my camera out fast enough to snap the ballooning that this thing did at first!) Then the torrential rain hit and it rained for about 45 minutes, blowing hard for the first 15 minutes. Thirty people had minor injuries from the first "gust front", several windows were broken in the press boxes, and some flooding was sustained in the lower stadium levels. The speed with which this storm hit was just astonishing!

After a 2+ hour rain delay and home plate area repairs, the game got underway at about 9:20. We stayed till about 10:30. The Cardinals won over Atlanta 8-3.

We were worried about our RV because we had left the small awnings down. Gary called the RV park just after the first wind, and they said it was a chaotic scene there - people who had their big awnings out lost them. A park employee did put our awnings up in time, and when we returned we found that, by no small miracle, everything was just fine. We never did hear what wind speeds were clocked, but it was a furious storm. The bad news is that it is still hot - only a temporary cooling was achieved from the storm.

Day 60 and 61 - From Minneapolis to St. Louis

On Day 60 (July 17th) we drove from Minneapolis to Des Moines, IA, stopping during the noon hour in Forest City, IA, at the Winnebago factory. We lunched in the RV in the parking lot of the visitor center and took a factory tour afterwards. The bus tour consisted of being driven around the very large factory grounds, having various buildings pointed out to us. Then we were taken to a building where the side walls of RV's are made, and another building where we watched flooring being installed, which is done before any walls are installed. It was so hot in the factory that I forgot to take any pictures (the tour is on the catwalk up close to the ceiling, and it was HOT!) We took a tour at the Monaco factory several years ago, and we felt that it was a superior tour in every way - I remember seeing many different processes from start to finish. The Winnebago tour was pale by comparison. Nonetheless, we think they make a good product, although one man in our tour group, who was the owner of a new Winnebago Vectra motor home, was obviously not happy, and kept making remarks about how you could see how human error came into play!

The drive from Des Moines to St. Louis (Day 61 - July 18th) was pretty - I'll say it again, Iowa is a really beautiful state - but it is really hot! The temperature in St. Charles, where we are currently staying, just west of St. Louis, was over 100 degrees when we arrived. But we did expect it to be hot.

Our front air conditioner does not seem to be working tonight, so we will have to rely on the back one. Gary thinks it may have something to do with the quality of the power here in the RV park -- the quality of electric power can vary widely. We'll see..........

Day 59 - Plymouth Church

Today we attended the church we were members of while we lived in Minneapolis, Plymouth Congregational Church. Visiting Plymouth is always a poignant experience for us - this church will always be "our church", even though we don't live here any more. The music is wonderful (Philip Brunnelle is organist and choirmaster). We were lucky - Philip was there on this summer Sunday. The Rev. Vivian Jones was in the pulpit -Vivian is now Minister Emeritus and is visiting from Wales for several weeks. His sermon topic today was "On Goodness" - a very excellent viewpoint of Christianity as it has changed through the centuries. We saw many friends who all greeted us so lovingly. The facility looks wonderful with the sanctuary, Guild Hall, and much else as beautiful as ever. The congregation is soon demolishing the "old" education wing and will build a much larger facility. Demo'ing is to begin tomorrow. It was fun to see the old (actually does not seem so old) facility one more time. I didn't take any pictures -- too busy talking with friends. It was a wonderful morning.

Afterward Herr's, Giske's, Jan Mattox and we went to the Minneapolis Institute of Art for lunch -- it was very pleasant. We then said our fondest farewell to these wonderful friends. Gary and I walked around the Institute to see the new Target wing and some other areas. It is a very fine museum!

We depart Minneapolis tomorrow.

Day 58 - Dinner with the gourmet group

Very hot here - it hit 100 degrees in St. Paul. We decided, during the day, to go to Mall of America. Many, many other people also made that decision! We had a specific errand: to buy a new espresso machine for the RV. The one we had was showing its age and hard to keep clean. We found just what we were looking for at Bloomingdales. But the Mall was so crowded we didn't do anything else there.

In the evening we had dinner with our gourmet group. These friends continue to get together, and we were so happy to be able to join them! We have been friends for years and our kids knew each other as part of our church affiliation. The Herr's hosted a lovely dinner, and the Giske's and Jan Mattox attended. We missed the Friskey's who were not with us - they were vacationing. We also lovingly remembered Mike Mattox whose birthday would have been on this day.

Pictured here, left to right back row are yours truly, Gary, Marcia & Ray Giske, Roger Herr. Seated left Jan Mattox and Bonnie Herr. You can click this picture to enlarge it, as with all pictures on this blog site.

Day 57 - A run around Lake Harriet, and baseball

We ran around beautiful Lake Harriet as early in the morning as we could get ourselves going (it is VERY hot here). Lake Harriet is one of the Mpls. chain of lakes, connected by park roads that, in total, are called the Grand Rounds. This lovely lake has homes all around, both a bike trail and a pedestrian trail, boating, and the Lake Harriet Bandshell, pictured here. We used to run to this lake from our house, all on parkway trails. It is very pretty!

We drove around two neighborhoods we used to live in: the first town house we lived in from 1966 to 1968, and the first house we owned, in Richfield, where we lived from 1968 to 1972. The Richfield house is pictured here.



In the evening we met friends for a Minnesota Twins/Cleveland Indians baseball game at the Metrodome. It was still 80+ degrees outside, but very pleasant inside. The Twins won the game in the bottom of the ninth inning, breaking the tie and winning 3-2. It was a really good game. The exterior of the Metrodome is pictured here.